Trent Reedy - Divided We Fall

Schmidty slapped his hand on one of the metal shelves. “I’m still chasing down some deals on more shelf-stable food, MREs, and survival packs and stuff. Prices on all that are way up.” He pointed his cigarette at the hatch we came down. “You can lock the closet door from the inside. Plus I reinforced the hatch with some heavy-duty locks. If anyone figures out the floor of the closet is a door, they’ll have a hell of a time getting it open.” He took a drag on his cigarette. “Oh, and I installed an air circulation and filtration system. I still have to run a duct underground so the vent can come out of that slag heap in the vacant lot next door. Brand-new toilet under the stairs, hooked up to the sewer and everything, but if the water supply gets cut off, there’s a bucket version. When this place is ready, you should be able to hide out here for months if you need to.”

I tried a joke. “And when the toilet bucket’s full?”

Schmidty wasn’t biting. “If the damned reporters ever leave, a guy I know, a guy I trust , is going to help me dig and reinforce a tunnel to the slag heap. That way you won’t be trapped down here if something happens upstairs. Plus you’ll be able to crawl out and dump your shit in the creek back there.”

Not long ago, if Schmidty had shown me all of this, I would have thought he was turning into one of those survivalist nuts — the guys who spent fortunes and way too much time building bomb shelters and preparing for the end of the world. But after the gunman last night, Specialist Stein’s arrest, and everything else that had happened, I was glad to know there was a place like this for me.

“There’s more,” Schmidty said. “Come on.”

“Where you going?”

“Just follow me, damn it,” he said, trailing a small cloud of smoke after him.

He led me to the large black safe in the back. The thing was at least four feet tall, with an old-fashioned spinning dial combination lock and a big steel lever. “What’s in there?”

He looked at me, annoyed, then leaned forward to examine the dial closely, rotating it so far to the right, all the way around to the left, then a short move to the right. With a grunt, he pulled the lever to the left and yanked open the door.

Schmidty reached in and took out a rifle like my M4 at the armory, but longer. He pointed the barrel at the floor and pulled back the charging handle, checking to make sure there was no round in the chamber. Then he handed the weapon to me. I immediately checked it the same way. One of the holiest commandments in the Army was that the very first step upon receiving a weapon was to clear it.

“An M16?” I said.

“What?” Schmidty bent to reach down into the safe. I closed my eyes, wondering why he even bothered to wear a belt. He stood up and slapped six fully loaded, thirty-round magazines on top of the safe. “No, check the fire selector lever. No auto or burst. It’s an AR15.”

“Aren’t those illegal?”

“The federal government claims it has the authority to take our guns away because the Constitution gives it power over interstate commerce. Idaho is one of a bunch of states with a law that says that as long as the weapon is manufactured, purchased, and remains inside the state, then interstate commerce and federal gun control laws don’t apply. This beauty was built down near Boise only last year.” He leaned on the safe. “Besides, what’s legal or not is starting to matter less and less. So listen. I know you still have your father’s nine mil. You got ammo?”

I shrugged. “Maybe one fifteen-round mag for the Beretta. I don’t know. It’s my dad’s. I’m not old enough to have it or buy anything for it.”

“Here.” He pushed a box of fifty nine-mil rounds into my hands.

“What am I supposed to do with this? I don’t think—”

“No, you’re not thinking, and that’s your problem. He shook his head. “Go down to Post Falls or Coeur d’Alene tonight and buy four more.”

“But I’m not old enough.”

“Yes, you are. You can’t own a handgun or the ammo for it until you’re eighteen, but you can buy the magazines.”

“Why would I want magazines if I can’t—”

“This isn’t a damned game!” I jumped a little. Schmidty yelled all the time, but usually at the radio or some frustrating car part he was working on. “Today everybody’s still pussyfooting around. How long before the bullets start flying for real? How long before you’re gonna need some real protection?”

“This is insane,” I said. “It’s out of control.”

“And that’s why you need to keep that Beretta loaded at home. Keep it in your closet or under your bed or some place you can get to it quickly.” He grabbed the AR15 from my hands. “People are out of work and pissed off. They don’t know if the retirement funds they’ve invested in their whole lives will be worth a damn. They can barely afford gas or food for their families. Now Idaho and the Fed are at each other’s throats. Folks are scared and looking for someone to blame. That man who tried to shoot you last night blames you. Others may blame you for the shootings or who knows what else. You need to be ready.”

“This” — he held up the rifle and then put it back into the safe — “will be down here.” He pulled a piece of paper from his pocket and handed it over. A set of three two-digit numbers was written on it in ink. “This is the combination. You get yourself in trouble and you need a weapon, you know where to find it. You need a safe place to stay” — he swept his hand to indicate the basement — “you can come here.”

“Thanks, but I don’t think I’ll need it. I mean, I hope I won’t.”

Schmidty scratched his big belly. “You believe that, you’re an idiot.” He took a drag on his cigarette.

I ran my hands along a row of cases of MREs. There weren’t even this many rations in my whole armory. “I know this all looks really bad, but this whole crisis or whatever they’re calling it is a bunch of political crap. This is America. We’ve worked things out before. We will this time.” I only partly believed what I was saying.

Schmidty put everything but the nine-mil shells back into the safe and locked it. He went to what I guess was the kitchen area and groaned as he sat down on a metal folding chair next to the table. “You know, the assholes in DC are always saying that America loves peace. But I’m fifty-seven years old, and even in my lifetime, this country has been at war for all but…” He looked up and squinted his eyes as if trying to figure it out. “All but about twenty-eight years. Half my life. Six different wars. And I’m not even counting when we sent troops to Panama or Bosnia, or when we send our drones or missiles flying in to kill people in Pakistan, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, and half a dozen other places. If they’re so committed to peace, but have failed so miserably the last fifty years, the last century , what makes you think they’re going to figure a way out of this mess without fighting?”

That was different, I thought. America had been forced into all those wars. Things had been wrong somewhere in the world and our soldiers went to fix it. This was the United States. My squad had screwed up and fired in Boise. None of what happened meant that there had to be any fighting. “Things will get better,” I said at last. They had to get better. “You’ll see.”

Schmidty shook his head and stubbed out his cigarette on the bottom of his boot. “Come on. We have some work to do. I want to put some improvements in on the Beast. Reinforce the body and frame.”

“What?”

He stood up. “Will you just let me do this? What I gotta do will take a few days, probably, so in the meantime you can borrow my Dodge Stratus.”